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Spotless Forsythia

#e3d785
Notes

Spotless Forsythia (#E3D785) is a soft amber with a warm character. It leans warm, pulling light toward red, orange, and yellow. Naturally inviting, it suits editorial and hospitality contexts. Its HSL profile (52°, 63%, 71%) places it in the balanced band at a light lightness. It works as a background wash, large-area fill, or soft illustration tone. Add a darker ink of the same hue when you need type over it. For a confident two-color system, pair it with its complementary blue. For something softer, pull in its analogous neighbors on either side of the wheel.

HEX
#e3d785
RGB
rgb(227, 215, 133)
HSL
hsl(52, 63%, 71%)
HWB
hwb(52 52% 11%)
OKLCH
oklch(87.1% 0.104 101.0)
P3
color(display-p3 0.8821 0.8448 0.5619)
HSV
hsv(52, 41%, 89%)
LAB
lab(85.32% -7.28 41.88)
LCH
lch(85.32% 42.51 99.86)
CMYK
cmyk(0%, 5%, 41%, 11%)

Etymology

Spotless
adjective

Old English spott (spot) plus suffix -less. As a color modifier, spotless implies a clear-and-unmarked quality where the hue carries no contaminating speck or stain. Sits at the crisp-and-clean end of the grid, parallel to pristine and unblemished in usage.

Forsythia
noun

Forsythia × intermedia, the East Asian shrub naturalized in European gardens — and the bright yellow flowers that cover bare branches in early spring before the leaves emerge. The color refers to a fresh Forsythia bloom in March: a saturated, slightly red-shifted bright yellow with the matte finish of small four-petaled flowers covering an entire shrub.

Closest matches

The nearest named color in three reference sources, ranked by perceptual distance (ΔE76 in CIELAB). ΔE < 1 is imperceptible to most viewers; ΔE > 10 is clearly different. When two sources point to the same hex they’re merged into one tile; click any to open that color’s page.

Variations

Click any swatch to explore

Harmonies

Accessibility

Color-vision simulation

How this color appears to viewers with the four major color-vision-deficiency types. Computed via the Machado (2009) physiologically-based model. If a tile matches the original, the color reads the same to that viewer.

#e3d785
Original
#e5d27f
Protanopia
#e9d888
Deuteranopia
#f0ccc3
Tritanopia
#d4d4d4
Achromatopsia
WCAG contrast

The color used as foreground text against pure white and pure black, with the contrast ratio and WCAG 2.1 grade. Aim for AA (4.5:1) for body text and AA Large (3:1) for 18 pt+ headlines; AAA (7:1) is the gold standard for long-form reading surfaces.

The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
Failon White
1.47:1
The quick brown foxSample body text at normal size. The wcag minimum for body contrast is 4.5:1 (AA) or 7:1 (AAA).
AAAon Black
14.33:1

Wide gamut

Display P3 representation

The CSS Color 4 wide-gamut form of this color. Both swatches render the same color on every display — the P3 form only diverges from sRGB when a designer pushes channels outside sRGB's reach.

sRGB hex
sRGB hex
##E3D785
Display P3
Display P3
color(display-p3 0.8821 0.8448 0.5619)
P3 has subtle headroomOKLCH chroma 0.104

Moderately saturated colors gain a small bump in P3 — the difference is usually visible side-by-side on wide-gamut hardware but won't change the character of the color.

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